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NMSU regents approve legislative requests

The New Mexico State University Board of Regents on Monday approved more than $14 million in legislative requests for fiscal year 2008-09.

Of that, $13.4 million is for programs on the main Las Cruces campus and $712,500 for the two-year campuses.

The big-ticket items include requests of $1 million for the Cooperative Extension Service/Agricultural Experiment Station to recover increased operating costs. These two programs provide research and extension programs to all 33 counties in New Mexico involving more than 400 faculty and staff in 53 offices. An additional $1.08 million for Cooperative Extension is earmarked for NMSU's tribal extension program, range improvement task force and Rural Economic Development Through Tourism (REDTT).

The College of Health and Social Services is requesting $1.9 million to expand nursing education. In fact, education across disciplines looms large in the budget requests. The College Assistance Migrant Program, a statewide program to prepare education leaders, a success center for the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) disciplines and funding for an initiative to address the shortage of speech-language pathologists in the state all are itemized in the requests.

The requests were prepared by the university budget committee, approved by President Michael Martin and presented to the regents by Senior Vice President for Business, Finance and Human Relations Jennifer Taylor and Assistant Vice President for Research and Planning Ricardo Rel.

Now that they have been approved by the board, they will be presented to the Higher Education Department for consideration for the 2008 legislative session in Santa Fe.

In other action, the regents approved a Plan2Plan program to help ensure implementation of the university's strategic plan.

The regents' next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 7 in Albuquerque followed by a joint meeting with the University of New Mexico board on Sept. 8. The joint meeting is in advance of the Aggie-Lobo football game in Albuquerque Saturday, Sept. 8.